The present invention relates to a device and method for studying particles in a fluid.
Microscopic marine particles can dramatically affect, and be affected by, water properties. For example, marine particles have been shown to be indicators of water properties such as pollution, nutrient distribution and water mass boundaries. They have also been shown to control significant properties of water including fluorescence, oxygen and nitrogen content, opacity and light attenuation. Finally, marine particles are living at the very bottom of the food web, and thus can dramatically affect life all the way up the food chain. Thus, it is important to fully understand the properties and distributions of the particles present in water.
Several instruments are available to study individual marine biological particles, including in-situ, on-vessel, and laboratory instruments. However, the currently available instrumentation that is used for marine particle analysis has limitations. Currently, because it is difficult to achieve a sufficient flow rate to enable accurate counting of cells while retaining imaging capability, there has been an ongoing need for instrumentation capable of analyzing and imaging marine particles in the 3-1000 .mu.m range both in the lab and on board a vessel.